Worse still, the little video screen in front of your seat may get turned off a little early, just before you’re told the name of the villain in a whodunit. And if that’s the movie you’ve been itching to watch for a while, it’s been effectively ruined for you.

That’s why I decided to watch “A Time Traveler’s Wife” on my trip from Seattle to Mumbai. It’s a perfect pick: I never really intended to watch the whole thing, so I couldn’t care less if it got cut off in the middle. The dialog didn’t matter too much, since Rachel McAdams is easy on the eyes and this is such a typical romance (man loves woman, woman loves man, man keep disappearing and popping up in other times, yada, yada…). And of course, I dozed off several times as the movie played on, but that didn’t matter all that much either.

Anyway, with this a priori stance about the movie, you shouldn’t really be expecting an unbiased review, but the truth is, I’m not here to comment on the movie at all. In fact, the only comment I have is on the name of the movie: I strongly believe the movie should have been named The Guy Who Disappears and Steals Clothes because, well, that’s what the lead character does all the time. Yes, he travels through time, sure, but that’s quite irrelevant, especially on mute.

Speaking of traveling through space-time, have you ever noticed how time-travelers appear elsewhere almost instantaneously? In real life, I would expect molecules of air and dust to get shoved aside violently when this happens, causing a tiny explosion. Oh well, I guess you can’t be all that realistic in a movie.…

On the bright side, this time traveler was less annoying than Hiro the Hero.

There’s no doubt that Ram Gopal Varma’s genre of horror is way better than the traditional Ramsay Brothers’ formula. Even so, low expectations is no excuse for making a mediocre film. Phoonk is a mixture of ideas taken from The Omen, The Exorcist and others, with an occasional attempt at cuteness. The underlying theme is the usual one: a man who doesn’t believe in the supernatural and his gradual transformation into a believer. Perhaps this movie was aimed at an audience unfamiliar with those classic themes, but a little originality would have been more than welcome.

I am also disappointed with the background score of the film. This is one of the most important elements of any movie, and is especially important for one that claims to scare its audience. Consider any well-received movie and you will find a fantastic score played at the right time and place, subtle yet effective. In the case of Phoonk and such other films, there’s nothing but a supposedly scary piece of music played loudly at random intervals, making it quite hard to listen to the dialogue.

Cinema is a composition of light and sound that requires careful timing, a plot built up at the right pace and a series of climaxes that enthralls the audience in one way or the other. Phoonk tries to be a ‘scary movie’ from the beginning to the end, and not surprisingly, it fails at this task.